The original source for Gretsch guitar knowledge.

Got excited for a minute…

When I saw a Tennessee Rose for $850 I was thinking maybe another Gretsch was in my near future - then I saw what had been done to the poor thing. "Schaller Pickups, Custom wiring scheme, added 2 position switch". So underneath those surrounds I can only imagine how the conversion was accomplished - plus the elimination of the master volume for the switch. What's your take on this?

Hard to have a take without seeing more. If it was professionally done without a lot of unnecessary hacking, $850 might still be a great deal. FilterTron Gretsches, with their big surrounds, can be pretty forgiving for pickup swaps.

Well, I received a little more info. The pickup hole routing is fairly drastic, but clean. The upper bout switch hole has been plugged with abalone or something, a switch has replaced the master volume and the general switching is "weird". I did get the serial # 9012119-364 which, if I understand the scheme means Dec. 1990.